Needs of Majority Outweigh Needs of One Disruptive Student

* After reading “O.C. District Sues to Remove Child From Classroom” (May 26), it’s easy to see why California’s schools are so beleaguered. Here is a violent child, biting, hitting and disrupting other students, the teacher and several aides in a kindergarten classroom.

Yet the school district is powerless to place him in a special-education class, where there is a smaller class size and the teacher is specially trained to deal with his condition.

Instead, his (parent has) forced the school to place him in a regular class, thus disrupting the education of 30 (or so) other students. The parents of those students have a right to be outraged, but they need to direct their anger at those responsible for this travesty.

I’ve been a teacher for 20 years, and I’ve watched as special education, bolstered by federal and state laws, has encroached further and further on the scarce funds allotted to schools.

These laws have not been funded adequately, so every “victory” for special education in the form of more rights, more aides, more programs and more private placement results in less money for the regular kids. The obvious result is larger class sizes, fewer materials and supplies, and fewer programs for the vast majority of students.

Therefore, several questions need to be considered:

After a team of educational specialists has determined the best placement for a disabled child, should the parents have absolute veto power over their recommendation?

Should the public schools have to deal with violent, unmanageable children in a regular classroom setting?

How are tax dollars best spent in education? Should we spend up to $50,000 on a single disadvantaged child to help him realize his full potential, or should we be trying to maximize the educational possibilities for the vast majority of students?

Parents need to stand up to the increasingly absurd demands of the special-education lobby.

BILL BOEHLERT

Huntington Beach

* It’s time for the parents of regular-education children to speak up and protect their children’s rights. These children are being denied their constitutional rights to a proper education.

When special-education students are mainstreamed into regular-education classrooms of over 30 students, one teacher and usually no aide, it is almost impossible for learning to go on without constant disruption.

The emotional and behavioral problems of these students demand all of the teacher’s attention. The other students do without, and their education suffers.

Special-education classes were developed to deal with the special needs of these children--very small classes with more than one aide.

Unless a student demonstrates that he or she is not disruptive to the learning environment of all the children in the class, he or she should be kept in special-education classes.

Why should the majority suffer because a few are heard all the time?

Parents, speak up for your children, protect their rights.

GAIL BRICKNER

Orange

* Re: federal Judge Matthew Byrne’s decision to allow disruptive pupil, Jimmy Peters, to return to class and continue to disrupt same and cause parents to remove their children from class: I’m not unhappy with this move. Judge Byrne by his decision has succeeded in driving one more nail into the coffin of public education in California and more reason for “vouchers.”

The federal judiciary has a long history of infringement on states’ rights by mandating all forms of oppressive rulings concerning prisons, environment, illegal immigrants education, etc. with no thought to what effect these will have on the citizens or their pocketbooks or their safety from violence.

The other interesting facet to this case is the determination of Mr. Peters to thrust upon the rest of the classroom his disruptive and undisciplined child, despite the fact the child had available a personal tutor and two child psychologists to help--at taxpayer expense. He just didn’t give a tinker’s damn about the others students.

TERRANCE MORAN

Newport Beach